There is no doubt Tumblr is taking off when it comes to personal blogging. As well as dozens of amazing free themes available you might want to set your blog apart with a premium custom theme.
Here are six easy to install, setup and use themes for Tumblr. Tumblr is definitely one of the easiest micro blogging systems around with probably one of the easiest iPhone publishing apps I have seen.
1. Gallera
“Gallera” is a clean and elegant gallery theme with subtle grunge background texture and custom typography. It’s best suited for photographers, artists and designers who want to showcase their work in the best possible way, but can be used as a web gallery or any other site where images take central part. View the Demo.
2. Litefolio
Litefolio is a clean, well designed theme ideal for freelance photographers and graphic designers. The clean and minimalistic portfolio theme also features a jQuery slider for designers, photographers and illustrators to make the most of presenting their work. View Demo.
3. Meteoro 2028
Meteoro 2028 a minimal but robust Portfolio for Tumblr. This item, in particular offer support for Photo Post, Photosets an Video post (Youtube an Vimeo for now). View the demo.
4.Monochrome
This theme features monochrome graphics and textures with a high level of detail to make your Tumblr blog look clean and professional and stand out from the rest. All the themes graphics, icons and javascript are hosted on Tumblr’s hosting service for easy installation, so you don’t have to worry about where to host the files. The Monochrome Tumblr Theme features some nice, fancy javascript rollover effects to make the theme feel more interactive to your viewers. View the demo.
5. Nuance
Nuance is an n unique and clean home display format with block styling related to their post date. The theme allows custom colours and is very well documented. View Demo.
6. Forma
Forma offers a new concept and style to all Tumblr users. It gets rid of the regular post icons, of the typical blog design and focuses on real content, present in a refined design. The user experience is the most notable feature of Forma. At the same time, it takes care of the author comfort with its awesome theme options. View the demo.
Conclusion
If don’t have an individual web presence then Tumblr is a great place to start. It offers custom domains, the ability to automatically send a tweet each time you update your blog, publish to Facebook and even schedule your posts.
If you use Tumblr for your photography portfolio why not post the address and your experiences in the comments?
Tumblr has it’s purpose; that is with finding fun, interesting and creative stuff, mostly in the way of artistic imagery and photographs, or quotes. However, I won’t use it for my own photography due to its Terms of Use:
“All materials displayed or performed on the Site, including, but not limited to text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, animations and Themes (as defined below), including without limitation the Tumblr Template Code (as defined below) (collectively, “Content”) (other than Content posted by Subscriber (“Subscriber Content”)) are the property of Tumblr and/or third parties and are protected by United States and international copyright laws.”
I know it isn’t unusual, but it still doesn’t make me want to use services which do such a thing for my photography.
(other than Content posted by Subscriber (“Subscriber Content”))
isnt that the important bit?
I concur with Mr. O’Kane. When researching blog sites, many of them had the same (or similar) Terms of Service. I finally settled on WordPress, as they provided the most conservative Terms.
In a related note, I really enjoyed the article on WordPress templates (http://www.sevenbyfive.net/apps/wordpress-photographers/). I think it may be time to reevaluate mine.
Does that mean they own the 1280×800 version of my image and not the higher quality file – or doesn’t it matter – is it any version of the image? Just wondering. I’m new to all of this.
I love the simplicity of the layout I’m using because it showcases the photos. Tumblr is great for a budding photographer and multimedia journalist like myself. I love it!
It’s already been said in the comments, but I think it’s worth adding to the main article. The terms of service make tumblr one of the WORST possible services out there for anyone who takes their photography seriously. This reads almost like an advert and doesn’t even mention the fact that by uploading a photo you’re giving away all rights to your photo. Take a cool photo of a band? Tumblr can now sell a license to the band to use it as a cd cover. You have no control, don’t earn anything, and don’t even get a credit. What a great service.
A pity about Tumblr’s TOS, and the fact that Google doesn’t seen to rank Tumblr blogs in their search. Blogger, WordPress.com and Flickr are all excellent in these two aspects, though.
The Tumblr TOS do not invalidate or supercede the copyright for subscriber-generated content (meaning your stuff belongs to you).
If one were to read (and actually post) all of the information relevant to this discussion, one would also have to remark that Tumblr’s TOS are quite explicit about user generated content:
“Subscriber shall own all Subscriber Content that Subscriber contributes to the Site, but hereby grants and agrees to grant Tumblr a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable right and license (with the right to sublicense)…”, meaning your stuff is and stays yours, but you allow Tumblr to publish it and let other users republish it.
It is quite unfortunate that some people read the TOS just enough to get themselves and others in trouble.
Your copyrighted material on Tumblr will be just that– YOUR copyrighted material.
Yes, it’s true that you still own your photo, or whatever else you upload. Can’t argue with that. BUT, You are giving them a license to do whatever they want with the photo. That isn’t on. They do require you licensing them to display the photo, so giving them a license to use the shot is a given, without it you can’t have it on your site. What becomes unreasonable though, is that by uploading, they can do ANYTHING with the shot, including editing it, using it for a t-shirt design and selling that, selling prints, the fact that they can sub-license it is the scariest though. Now they have your photo, they can license it to an advertising agency for hundreds of thousands, and they don’t even need to tell you they’ve done it, nevermind pay you anything. How would you feel knowing your photos are being used for major ad campaigns, which earnt tumblr tumblr thousands and you don’t see a penny?
“All materials displayed or performed on the Site, including, but not limited to text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, animations and Themes (as defined below), including without limitation the Tumblr Template Code (as defined below) (collectively, “Content”)
—–> (other than Content posted by Subscriber (“Subscriber Content”)) <————
are the property of Tumblr and/or third parties and are protected by United States and international copyright laws.”
They do not have copyright of your photography, nor can they use it without your permission to make tshirts, cd album covers etc. This is actually to protect OTHERS from using your material without your permission and to protect THEIR material from being used without permission. Like the 20+ people that reblogged it.
C'mon guys, actually read the fine print….not skim through it.
You do realise that you just posted the section relating to the content they provide? That section has absolutely nothing to do with it.
In that section they are saying that all the icons and logos and source code belongs to them and you can’t use it. Read the section titled subscriber content. That’s the section related to your uploaded stuff.
Unfortunately, tumblr decided to use a catch all approach. Are they likely to use the rights you give them? No, but they DO have those rights. They are covering themselves and anything that might happen in the future. They could easily cover themselves without using such broad, rights grabbing language though.
They may be able to use the stuff that is uploaded but, for me at least, I dont upload high res stuff. It’s all 1000px or less at 75dpi. If they really wanted to do something with my stuff, they don’t have the originals.
Someone mentioned them licensing a photo to a band for a cd cover. If you aren’t shooting FOR the band, then do you yourself actually have the right to sell the photo in the first place? Sure you could post it, but I’m pretty sure you can’t sell it. You can’t sell live recordings of concerts, I would assume that same logic would apply to fan photos as well. Unless, of course, you are shooting for a publication or something.
In my opinion, I don’t really care about their TOS. I’ve never sold a photo and quite frankly wouldn’t mind the exposure.
I am a happy tumblr user. I’ve been using the Scaffold theme (http://scaffold.tumblr.com/) since I joined tumblr a year and a half ago.
Some photogs get really paranoid about TOS. Seriously, how many photos do you think get uploaded every day? Of those photos, how many do you think are actually any good? And of those, how many do you think tumblr would actually want to take and use? Then, of those, how many have people in them? If tumblr plams to liscense photos with people, they will need, at the very least, a model release, which they will need to contact you for. Without a model release they risk litigation. Even if they can claim ownership of an image , they wouldn’t have all the required paperwork to do anytning with it.
For me, it just doesnt seem likely. But, like I said, I’ve never sold a photo. Maybe I’m just lax on protecting my photos.
You can see my stuff at http://thestudiomn.tumblr.com
I use Tumblr and 500px as a way to display my photography. Tumblr is great for posting from mobile devices. I started using it a few months ago, and found it to be easy. 500px I just started using as a suggestion from a friend. Both websites are a great way to post your portfolio somewhere for free that looks good for those who aren’t web design pros.
Addresses: katydid78.tumblr.com and katherinestewart.500px.com
I use tumblr for my photography, if anyone wants to check it out, it’s
vibrantlyalive.tumblr.com
thanks!
hi there, my name y luis and i’m from argentina, me and my girl are starting with tumblr, we made our first page with it and we well be very pleased for you to check it out, the address is http://picapaophoto.tumbler.com/
we are very excited to be part of the tumblr world, there are so many good things to share and learn on this community, always you can find something or someone to be inspaired of. Nice art, vogue, pics, music… well see you there!
xoxo
picapapo photo
ALL SOCIAL MEDIA PHOTO SHARING SITES HAVE SIMILAR TERMS. THIS IS BECAUSE IN ORDER FOR TUMBLR TO DISPLAY YOUR WORKS, ALLOW REBLOGS, ETC THEY MUST HAVE YOUR AGREEMENT. Jesus people, relax. Do you guys honestly think your photos are worthy of an album cover? Give me a break.
Lol, funny you should say that… I have an album cover shoot booked in for next month…
Yea… for people that are shooting for artists like myself this is pretty important. If your photo or photos aren’t good enough to be on an album or some form of commercial material this obviously wouldn’t be a concern for you.
Instagram does NOT claim ANY ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) that you post on or through the Instagram Services. By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly (“private”) will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.
So that’s far more acceptable and from a similar service. Now take your average web hosting provider who hosts all those privately maintained sites without any requirement to legally claim or deny ownership of any data. Information or image. These technically store and distribute your images without any pretence that they need special rights to enable hosting.
It’s fairly safe to assume the better photographers aren’t sitting up nights manually coding their own sites, but rather looking for a reliable service that doesn’t infringe on their rights. It’s fairly safe to assume tumblr by its stated terms is not such a site.
http://markkalanphoto.tumblr.com/